Kohl, who was chancellor first of West Germany and then of a united Germany from 1982 to 1998, combined a dogged pursuit of the European idea of unity with a keen instinct for history.
The longest-serving chancellor since Bismarck, Kohl, despite his hardliner reputation and huge physique, however, did not foresee the Russians backing off without much resistance, facilitating German reunification. And about the German situation they said: "if Helmut Kohl doesn't push it through, nobody else will", Kohl said.
From autumn 1989 to spring 1990 Hans Modrow was prime minister of the GDR and held the first talks with the FRG Chancellor Helmut Kohl about the reunification of Germany.
In 2000, he was forced to resign as honorary chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the party he had led for 25 years, after admitting to receiving $1.31 million in illegal cash donations during his time as chancellor, which he doled out to local party organisations. "It will be a while before we will truly be able to measure what we have lost with his passing", she said, before concluding: "I bow before his memory".
Mrs Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, tweeted: "In deep mourning for a great German and a great European".
Without Helmut Kohl in the poition of Germany's Federal Chancellor, there would be no euro today and the EU would never get its contemporary contours, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said. Like them, he made his overriding goal the rebuilding of Germany within a united Europe.
"Helmut hated war - but he detested totalitarianism even more", Bush said in a statement of the former German chancellor.
"Working closely with my very good friend to help achieve a peaceful end to the Cold War and the unification of Germany within North Atlantic Treaty Organisation will remain one of the great joys of my life", Bush said in a statement Friday. He lost to Helmut Schmidt, of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SDP), but in 1982 led a coalition to oust Schmidt, joining forces with the left-winger's former allies in the centrist Free Democratic Party (FDP).
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"He was a great statesman and a visionary politician who marked our continent for decades", Leuthard said in a brief statement on Friday.
Not long after former Chancellor Kohl passed, the CDU uploaded a photo of him on its official Twitter account and wrote, "We mourn". The party leaders hinted that Kohl's tenure was more productive than his successors Gerhard Schröder and Merkel.
Putin was a KGB officer in communist East Germany when Kohl spearheaded the reunification of East Germany and West Germany.
French President Emmanuel Macron called Kohl an architect of French-German friendship. Expressing regret for "mistakes", Mr. Kohl refused to disclose the names of any donors, even after a parliamentary inquiry was begun. The Soviet leader agreed to withdraw troops from East Germany, and in exchange Bonn provided Moscow with financial aid and food supplies.
Often harsh and thin-skinned, Kohl also could display a quick wit and jovial earthiness.
After she killed herself in 2001, though, Heribert Schwan, a journalist who had ghostwritten three volumes of Mr. Kohl's autobiography and claimed to have had close access to his wife, depicted her as a tragic figure, who had worn the trappings of a political spouse "like armor" to shield her unhappiness in the role.
"Helmut Kohl was an important German, and an important European".
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